(Crowd) Size Doesn’t Matter, but MSNBC Still Flushes What Little Credibility It had Down the Toilet

Ed Schultz does the same, but I never gave him much credibility in the first place.

So Glenn Beck had his rally back in August, and last weekend Ed Schultz had his rally.  Fast Eddie bragged that he could match Beck’s rally and then the next day you saw an oddly defensive claim that his crowd was about the same size, via Newsbusters:

This Sunday the Washington Post reported, "More than 400 groups endorsed the Nation Working Together rally, which organizers said drew a crowd of 175,000 people - about what they expected."...

Now, conservatives want you to believe that Glenn Beck's phony religious revival was way bigger than the One Nation rally. Well, let me take you back to the day of the Beck rally on August 28th, 2010, at 6:32 P.M., CBS.com proved Beck's crowd was, as I said, no big shakes. "An estimated 87,000 people attended the rally organized by radio talk show host and Fox News commentator Glenn Beck Saturday in Washington, according to a crowd estimate commissioned by CBS News. The company, AirPhotosLive.com, based the attendance on aerial photos it took over the rally." Now to be fair, NBC News put the size of Beck's crowd at 300,000 people. So, somewhere in between all of this, 87,000, give or take 9 grand by that company, and 300,000 is reported by NBC. Pretty much, would you say that the size of the crowd is pretty much the same? I would. I was there. The people I saw, it was packed.

Yes, so what are you going to believe?  Fast Eddie or your lying eyes?  Here’s Fast Eddie’s crowd:

 And here is Beck’s:

And notice how Fast Eddie makes his argument.  He doesn’t show you these kinds of photos.  Instead he goes by estimates.  First he claims the Fast Eddie rally drew about 175K by relying on the organizers of the rally.  You know, because they are so trustworthy.  Then when it is time to estimate Beck’s rally, he he first cites the supposedly proven estimate of not his network, or its affiliates, but CBS news.  Then he eventually he mentions the 300K estimate of his network’s affiliate.

Of course I guess you could play a game of saying, sure a crowd that looks half the size is actually “about the same size” after all, how close does two things have to be to be “about” the same size?  About is inherently a vague term.  But MSNBC should not have allowed that to air without a correction.  I expect to hear of one soon.  As they say, Fast Eddie is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.

And all of this is silly anyway.  Demonstration is the right of the people, but honestly I have been to like one demonstration in my whole life.  Oh, right, two.  I forgot about the time I participated in a walkout because my school eliminated spring break due to Hurricane Hugo.  How many of you ever protested anything, as in a demonstration?  Not many, I believe.  I mean let’s take the larger estimate of Beck’s crowd: 300K.  Okay well there are 300 million people in the United States, so basically Beck’s rally represented about 0.1% of the American population.  And Fast Eddie’s represented like 0.05% of it, probably less.

The important thing is not to show up at Beck’s rally.  The important thing is to show up at the voting booth.  Even if you are going to vote for the wrong people, vote.  I mean I hope you vote for all the people I want to win, but hope even more fervently that you vote.

But still, important or not, MSNBC has an obligation to the truth and letting Fast Eddie’s bullshit stand violates it.  I expect a correction soon.

Update: Weasel Zippers catches the official Fast Eddie rally page using a picture from MLK's I have a Dream speech, rather than a picture of the actual rally.  Heh.

Update II: I was curious about how Grayson was doing ever since his outrageous Taliban Dan ad, (answer: not good), when I ran across this bit.  Guess who loved the Talilban Dan ad?  Fast Eddie!  I wish I was shocked.